Librarian Blog

After the rain had stopped for awhile Thursday morning, my wife and I decided it must might be a nice enough day to get lunch and sit outdoors to enjoy it.

The temperature at noon was about 80 degrees and there was a slight breeze. The sun stayed behind the clouds.

We headed over to the Back Porch, Wimberley's newest eatery, fearing we might not get a seat, so pretty was the day.

We did get seated, right where we could look out on Cypress Creek and hear it babbling over a low-water dam.

Within a few minutes we had our hamburgers.

You know, I told my wife, this is a remarkable thing we are doing right now and we are acting like it is something we do all the time.

We don't and haven't.

For four years we lived in Canyon, near Amarillo. No creekside dining up there.

For nearly 25 years we lived in Wichita Falls. Certainly no dining on the water there.

And for four years we lived in Temple. Now, there, you could drive over to Belton Lake and eat at the Dead Fish Grill on a Friday night and feel like you were something special. We did that maybe three times.

We had a condo in Santa Fe for a few years. No creeks there, either.

What a treat to be able to drive about five minutes from our house, sit beside a beautiful creek and enjoy a great meal at lunchtime.

The annual Friends of the Library book sale is on Oct. 21 and 22 at the Chapel in the Hills.

The Friends book hoarders have been working like crazy this year to catalog thousands of books donated for the sale. We now have not one, but two, outbuildings on our lot devoted to the housing of book-sale books.

I have no idea how to prove this, but I would wager that we get more used books for our sale than any other town our size in Texas, maybe in the country. Almost not a single day goes by without us taking in some used books to be sold for the library's benefit.

As in the past, Friends only can come to the sale from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 21, and the following day, Oct. 22, the doors are open to everyone from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

All proceeds from this big sale go back into library services and supplies.

So, plan now to attend.

Oh, and you can join the Friends any time between now and the last hour of the preview sale on Oct. 21 by dropping by the library and filling out a blank form.

I see in the Austin newspaper today that some school districts in Texas are heading back to the future again.

Here is the back they are heading toward:

When I was a kid, we had 20 minutes or 30 minutes of recess, full of free-for-all play, in the morning and 20 to 30 minutes gain in the afternoon, and right after finishing lunch we headed outside to play, as well.

We ran off a lot of steam.

Here is why these school districts are going back there:

They have figured out that you can't use enough Ritalin to keep boys from being energetic.

We have gone through about 20 years of drugging boys so they would sit still and pay attention. Ironically, that's roughly the same time period when we jailed so many of them for using and dealing illegal drugs.

Coming full circle, we are now back in the '50s, and recess is back on the agenda.